How to build a sovereign network? - A proposal to measure network sovereignty

2025-10-27

AI Summary

Network operators face vendor lock-in risks, where failure of a single vendor severely compromises network survivability. Method: This paper introduces the concept of “network sovereignty”—defined as the capability to reduce dependence on specific component vendors to enhance resilience—and proposes the first quantitative metric, Cut-Set Coloring (CSC), grounded in graph-theoretic cut-set analysis and vertex coloring. To maximize CSC, we formulate the CSC-ILP integer linear programming model, which jointly optimizes vendor assignment and topology-aware redundancy. Results: Experiments on real-world topologies demonstrate that our approach significantly improves network sovereignty over state-of-the-art strategies, effectively mitigating vendor lock-in, enhancing fault robustness, and ensuring service continuity. Key contributions include: (1) a novel, quantifiable metric for network sovereignty; (2) the first optimization framework explicitly designed to maximize sovereignty; and (3) empirical validation of its efficacy on production-grade network topologies.

Technology Category

• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Search and Optimization: Combinatorial Optimization
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• Social Networks and Social Media: Social media analysis through the lenses of networks

Abstract

Network sovereignty is a network operator's ability to reduce the dependency on component manufacturers to minimize the impact of manufacturer failures. Network operators now face new design challenges to increase network sovereignty and avoid vendor lock-in problems because a high dependency on a manufacturer corresponds to low survivability if that manufacturer is unavailable. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a novel metric to measure network sovereignty, the Cut Set Coloring (CSC) score. Based on the CSC core metric CSC-ILP, our Integer Linear Program formulation is presented to maximize network sovereignty. We compare CSC-ILP's performance with state of the art manufacturer assignment strategies.

Problem

• Proposes a metric to measure network sovereignty
• Formulates integer program to maximize sovereignty
• Compares performance with manufacturer assignment strategies

Innovation

• Proposes Cut Set Coloring metric for sovereignty
• Uses Integer Linear Programming to maximize sovereignty
• Compares performance with manufacturer assignment strategies